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YugoslaviaN MASSACRES

• U.N. OPENS Kosova TO ANTI-FAMILY ZEALOTS
• Albanians Bar Russians From Kosova

U.N. OPENS Kosova TO ANTI-FAMILY ZEALOTS
By ROD DREHER

NOW that NATO troops have ended ethnic cleansing in Kosova, there's reason to fear that the United Nations Population Fund will do what the Serbs failed to: pacify the region by reducing the Albanian population.

So say Catholic human-rights activists, who worry that UNFPA's activities in Kosova dovetail ominously with Slobodan Milosevic's longstanding determination to slash the ethnic-Albanian birth rate, which is far higher than that of Serbs.

Last summer, Milosevic's minister for family affairs, Rada Trajkovic, denounced the "demographic bomb" ticking in Kosova. Using language worthy of Nazi eugenicists, she called Albanian women "child-bearing machines."

She also claimed the high child-bearing numbers were the result of an oppressive ethnic patriarchy - all the more reason for Slobbo, that noted feminist and humanitarian, to call in right-minded progressives to save Albanian maidens from brutish husbands.

UNFPA confirms that months later, Milosevic invited the agency into Kosova - and, tellingly, nowhere else in Serbia - to assess the situation.

Full-scale ethnic cleansing erupted before a report could be filed.

Today, with Kosova administered by the United Nations, population-control operatives are there running programs to ensure that, in the words of UNFPA spokesman Alex Marshall, "women get decent basic reproductive health care."

To Austin Ruse, that's a euphemism for pushing a secular Western "contraceptive mentality" - including acceptance of abortion, the abortifacient "morning-after pill," birth-control tablets, condoms and the like - upon an uninterested Muslim population.

Ruse, the director of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a U.N. lobbying organization, recently returned from a tour of refugee camps in Albania.

Ruse discovered that not only were the Kosovar women strong and confident - hardly weak sisters needing rescue - but that they delight in motherhood.

"An American nurse in one camp told me that telling a Kosovar woman she's pregnant is like making her whole world," Ruse says.

The concerns of Ruse and others are "garbage" to UNFPA's Marshall, who claims his agency merely offers Kosovars "the kinds of services that women in New York City would be outraged if they couldn't get."

Marshall maintains that if legitimate authority asks UNFPA to leave, the group will. But for now, Slobbo technically still runs the place. That UNFPA justifies its presence by claiming a Milosevic mandate should give Kosovar Albanians sufficient reason to resist Belgrade's pill-pushing emissaries.

For the time being, nobody is forcing Albanian women to contracept or abort, so what's the big deal?

Population Research Institute director Steven Mosher, the man who first exposed China's forced abortion policy, says that's not the way authoritarian regimes do population control.

In countries like Serbia, he says, "the state often runs roughshod over the rights of people, especially poor people."

In Peru, for example, a PRI investigator found evidence - later presented to Congress - that government agents denied food aid to illiterate campesinas unless the women agreed to sterilization.

The same thing could easily happen with U.N. approval in a Milosevic-run Kosova, Mosher warns - and even in an independent Albanian-run state desperate for Western financial aid. The World Bank often ties development loans to the willingness of governments to implement population-control schemes.

It's wonderful that the United Nations protects ethnic Albanians from Milosevic. But who will protect these peasants from U.N.-backed population-control zealots who evangelize for the same materialistic, anti-child creed that has resulted in Europe's looming underpopulation crisis?

Westerners have forgotten that large families are a blessing, not a curse.

The Kosovars, poor and unsophisticated, have not. Their strength and their hope lies in their families, and not even the Butcher of Belgrade could take that away from them. So why must we?

Monday August 23 7:20 AM ET

Albanians Bar Russians From Kosova

By BLERIM GJOCI Associated Press Writer

Rahovec, Yugoslavia (AP) - Ethnic Albanians prevented Russian peacekeepers from entering the southern Kosova town of Rahovec today, barricading the roads with tractors, cars and buses and deflecting efforts by Dutch and German forces to let the Russians in.

Kosova Albanians don't want Russian peacekeepers in Rahovec, 40 miles southwest of Pristina, because they say Russians collaborated with Serb paramilitaries who swept through the region during the 78-day NATO bombing campaign. Hundreds of thousands of Kosova Albanians were forced from their homes and others were killed.

``Russians cannot come to our city because they are criminals,'' said Hasan Sokoli, 65, one of scores of townspeople manning the barricades.

The Russians were supposed to have begun taking up positions in the town today, replacing Dutch soldiers who have been patrolling Rahovec, which is in the German sector of southwestern Kosova.

But when Russian armored personnel carriers rolled to the gates of the town, they found the roads blocked. A Russian officer tried to explain that his troops were taking control of the town under international agreements reached between NATO and the Russian government.

The ethnic Albanians, however, refused to accept the explanation.

German and Dutch troops were also prevented from entering the town.

There have been anti-Russian protests at every place in Kosova where Russians have been stationed in Albanian-majority areas. In contrast, the only time American troops have faced a hostile Albanian crowd was when they defended the Russians in one incident.

``The Russians who took part in the most inhumane massacres and criminal acts are not welcome in Rahovec,'' Agim Hasku, a local leader, told a crowd of more than 1,500 gathered in the city's main square Sunday.

``NATO yes, Russians no'' and ``Russians murdered our children,'' read some protesters' signs. Others waved the red-and-black Albanian flag.

Rahovec was the scene of heavy fighting in the summer of 1998, during Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists.

That crackdown led to NATO's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, which ended when Milosevic accepted a peace plan in June.

``We shall find a way to fulfill our task,'' Col. Gen. Georgy Shpak told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency today. ``We shall methodically and calmly occupy our positions.''

While a small group of Russians were to arrive today, it was expected to take at least two weeks for them to take over full patrolling and security responsibilities.

Over the weekend, the Dutch began rounding up hundreds of automatic and semi-automatic weapons from Rahovec's 2,000 remaining Serbs.

Groups of Serbs gathered around the main collection point Sunday, smoking and discussing what would happen next.

``We are all packing up to leave. We don't feel safe now without our weapons,'' said a man who gave his initials only as G.K. for fear of revenge attacks. He added that the planned arrival of the Russians would not help the situation because they would be under control of the Germans.

``The Serbs are not satisfied with the relations'' the NATO-led peacekeepers have with them, he said.

Bozana Dedic, a former schoolteacher in Rahovec, said her bags were packed and she was only waiting until an international organization could escort her and other Serbs who wanted to leave Kosova, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

``I insisted on staying in Kosova. But after all I survived, I'll never be back,'' she said.

Reprisal attacks by the majority ethnic Albanians have prompted most of Kosova's former 200,000-member Serb community to seek sanctuary in other parts of Yugoslavia. Kosova's population is largely ethnic Albanian.